Shopify Email Review - An Integrated Marketing Service

What Is Shopify Email?

Available directly through the Shopify marketplace, this addon gives you the tools to be able to conduct email marketing campaigns from within your ecommerce store, creating a fully integrated tool for both transactional and marketing emailing. 

Shopify Email Pros & Cons

Pros

• Integrates with Shopify interface - If you’re already annoyed with having to flick between different tabs and logins, or put off by having to learn a new interface, this could be exactly what you’re looking for. The fact it’s made by Shopify, for Shopify, means it slots in seamlessly with your CRM

• Low sending costs - The way this service is sold makes for a very scalable, cost-effective solution. Free for up to 2,500 emails is a grand start, and if you want to send more, it costs just $1 for every 1,000. You can change this every month for true flexibility

• Easy to set up - I’ve seen email marketing tools in the past that make you feel like you’re being made to jump through hoops, just to get everything initially set up and integrated smoothly. None of that here, though! All you need to do is navigate to the Shopify marketplace, download the app, and hey presto, off you go!

Cons

• Email template limitations - The email designer has some great features that I’ll get into later, but it does come with its limitations. The amount of pre-made templates you can pick from is quite limited, and you’re not able to save your own templates. Personalized emails are off the cards as you’re not able to input interchangeable fields such as “first name” for a more personal touch

• No marketing automation - This Shopify emailing addon comes with very limited automation options, and automation can have very useful applications especially with an ecommerce store. No automation means no welcome emails or abandoned cart chasers

Who Is Shopify Email Recommended For?

If you only need some basic email marketing software without having to pay the big fees or having to invest time learning whole new systems of work, Shopify Email was made with you in mind. 

This service is nothing fancy compared to others, but then not everyone wants an all singing all dancing tool if they only need some simple functionality.

Who Is Shopify Email Not Recommended For?

Well first off, if you’ve not got Shopify, this service becomes totally useless as it only integrates within your Shopify account. 

Don’t expect many advanced features here either, as this is a platform designed for people with basic sending and marketing needs. If you want more advanced automation, this tool definitely isn’t for you.

Shopify Email Pricing

I shouldn’t have even bothered with making a table for this one! Shopify Email comes by default as a free service, giving you 2,500 emails per month to initially play around with. If you need anything over this, you can pay $1 for every additional 1,000 you need. Simple, right? Not to mention cheap!

Cancellation / Refund Policies

Seeing as the email sending service functions on a pay-as-you-go system, there isn’t much in the way of a refund policy. However, it’s worth noting that if you do purchase additional emails, they are exclusive to the month of purchase, meaning you can’t carry any remaining credits over to the next month.

Shopify Email Features

While this email marketing addon might not have all the bells and whistles that some other platforms boast, the features they do have are effective for anybody just wanting a simple tool to engage with more of their customers on Shopify. Let’s have a look at how.

·       Easy Setup

One of the standout features of Shopify Email is just how damn simple it is to set up. If you have a Shopify account already, all you need to do is go to the app store or promotional page and download it. All your contacts along with their information will automatically populate without you having to lift a finger. You can literally be up and running in a minute.

·       Personalized Email Templates

Yeah having email templates is great, and pretty common in this industry. But having email templates pre-populated with your own personal products, branding and color schemes? Ok, I’m impressed. This is an especially appealing feature for those of you who consider email design a tedious process.

·       List Segmentation

Being able to group your contacts into specific groups based on their browsing and buying habits makes it easy for you to send relevant content to the right people. If a group of people was recently browsing for climbing gear, for example, this feature would allow you to group them together and send them a specific campaign for some of the best deals on climbing shoes.

·       Send From Your Domain

Shopify Email allows you to send emails from your own personal email address. This is the kind of feature that helps improve the deliverability of your email campaigns and avoid those pesky spam filters if you have a healthy reputation. It’s also a beneficial feature to help increase your brand loyalty and visibility.

·       Instant Store Integration

If you’ve already got a solid list of customers associated with your Shopify store, they’ll automatically populate over into your new emailing plugin, saving you the hassle of exporting, formatting, and reuploading big lists. Your products become easily accessible in the email designer so you can set up campaigns with links to your store in no time.

·       Track & Report

Being able to see specific statistics relating to your email marketing campaign is an essential feature to have if you’re wanting to refine and improve conversations with your customers. This tool gives you reports which track open rates, click rates, bounces, unsubscribed, unique visitors and associated sales for a thorough, easily accessible overview.

FEATURES SCORE: 2.5/5

Shopify Email Automation Features

Automatic list management - If you’re sending emails to large lists, it’s normal to have a few bounces or unsubscribes after campaigns, that’s fine. The real pain in the ass can come from having to remove all these bad apples from your contacts after. But you won’t have to worry about that, as Shopify Email will automate a list cleanup operation that removes these addresses for you.

Email marketing automation - The real shortcoming of this plugin is the inability to create automations. You’ll have to manually start every campaign yourself, which means that some really useful processes such as abandoned cart emails, automatic purchase follow-ups and welcome emails for new subs are all unavailable. 

Shopify Email Software Integration

This tool for email marketing was developed by Shopify, for Shopify. The drawback of this is that you won’t be able to integrate it with shopfronts elsewhere, but it also results in some great benefits. 

One click is all it takes to have everything set up, which side-steps all that faffing around sometimes associated with integrating services from different companies. A benefit of this is that customer habits are connected to your contact lists automatically so you can group by specific segments for targeted emailing that’s actually relevant.

Shopify Email Alternative Brands

MailerLite - With this software, you’ll be getting a lightweight tool with a focus on ease of use so you can start conducting marketing campaigns in no time. It comes with a drag-and-drop email designer and forms which you can integrate into your online shop front. 

EmailOctopus - Another email marketing tool if you’re on a shoestring budget, here you’ll get access to plenty of advanced features to help you grow your contacts and engagement. With scalable plans and an option to integrate with your Amazon SES account for a cheaper service, you won’t be breaking the bank with this one.

Sendinblue - This highly compatible platform comes with plugins that let you integrate with a variety of other services, so you’re not just limited to Shopify! They offer a range of features to help with your marketing tasks which they’re constantly looking to improve and add to.

Conclusion

This is a handy tool for those of you who see the benefits of email marketing, but don’t want to spend loads of time on it. Automatically populating templates and sync between customer data and contact lists are all massive time savers, but it’s definitely not at the stage where you can cancel your external email marketing subscription and replace it with this.